The Side Effects Of Being Online

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Their findings? Media overload might decrease your brain’s ability to filter out irrelevant information and ignore distractions. Such poor “attentional control,” has been tied to depression and social anxiety, according to research published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and the Psychological Bulletin.

Does this mean the end of Words With Friends while you catch up on Real Housewives? Not yet, Becker says. He cautions that the team’s research is preliminary, and only shows a correlation between media multitasking and symptoms of depression and anxiety.

“It might be that media multitasking causes increased symptoms of depression and social anxiety, but it’s also possible that depression or social anxiety makes a person more likely to media multitask,” Becker explains.

So what should you do while researchers figure it out? Becker says he’s hesitant to offer specific advice before establishing concrete evidence. But taking frequent breaks from daily inundations of information certainly won’t hurt, he says. So if you’re already holding your laptop to read this article…how about you put the smartphone down.